you speak like I stabbed you (but my knife's in my hand not your gut)
by smileyfacebabe
Summary: You are sent to kill him and he is just another target, just another man, a man with a strange face in a sea of strange faces. But then he says a name and your world pauses, just for a second. (Bucky centric, spoilers for Captain America 2: The Winter Solider)


Notes: I SAW CAPTAIN AMERICA 2 AND IT WAS GREAT. BUT SADNESS. THERE WILL DEFF BE MORE CAPTAIN AMERICA 2 FICS LATER (including the Teen Wolf where Lyds, Stiles, and Derek go see it, btw) BUT NOT NOW. I ACTUALLY HAD A PAPER DUE TWO HOURS AGO. BUT THIS REALLY, REALLY NEEDED TO BE WRITTEN. SO SPOILERS FOR CAPTAIN AMERICA 2. ENJOY.

Notes2: I apologize for the second person use, but brainwashed!Bucky called for it.

Dedication: The fucking flawless actors/actresses in that movie. Because HOT DAMN everyone was on point.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything but my nifty Black Widow dogtag.

* * *

The man is just another man, another target, another mission. You know your job, you are good at your job, and you have not failed yet. The man is just another strange face in a sea of strange faces and he does not matter, because you have your orders. He will be a corpse soon and it will be your doing. He fights well, though, strong, stronger than any other you've fought. You would be impressed, if you bothered with such a thing. Your hand is curled around your blade, your metallic arm whirls slightly as you tense, prepared to strike, and then he speaks.

"Bucky," he says. He says it as if there is a knife in his gut, one that is being dragged up to his throat so that his guts spill across the street. The muscles you were tensing to attack react without your instruction, your heart races, and he repeats the name. You blink. Pain is written all over his face, deep and desperate like he is a starving man looking through a window at an enormous buffet.

"Who is Bucky," you ask. You should be attacking, but you are not. You cannot explain why, but this is important. The man's face crumples at your words and even though he does not repeat it, the name rings through your ears. You escape. Later, when you have questions, no one steps forward to answer them.

"The man on the bridge," you repeat. His face is stuck in your head, clear and bright and solid. You can hear his voice say that name, over and over. It is like you have been hit by a flash grenade, light and sound over-powering your senses until there is nothing left, nothing but him. You struggle with it, with the memory.

"I know him," you tell the men around you. "Who was he?" But no one answers. They press you back into the machine. When you stop screaming your head is empty of sight and sound. You have forgotten the name the man whispered. He is nothing but a target, a strange face in a sea of strange faces.

But then he keeps saying "Bucky," repeating it like a broken record, and you hit him not because it is your job but because you want him to stop. You want him to stop talking, because it is making your head hurt, because it is making your head pound with images you don't recall, with voices that come to you from distances you cannot fathom. It hurts, the way he says that name, _James Buchanan Barnes,_ as if it belongs to you, as if you belong to him, belong with him. You push him to the ground and you hit him, again and again, in the hopes that it will make it all stop, because it has to make it stop, it has to.

He is bleeding. His eye is already swelling and bruising. There is a cut beside his lip, one that will need stitches. He wheezes when he breathes, because something it most likely broken in his ribcage. He wheezes and bleeds under your grip and your metallic arm whirls as your muscles tense to hit him again, but something about the sight stops you. This sight is familiar, his bruising jawline, his split lip, the swelling in his eye; you have seen this man bloody and beaten like this before.

"Might as well go ahead and do it," the man rasps out between his bloody lips. "Because I'm sticking with you until the end of the line."

_Steve,_ you think, unbidden. The man's name is Steve Rogers. An image flashes through your mind, a bleak day, a key under a brick, couch cushions on the wooden floor; the images swirl behind your eyes, never staying long enough to pin now and understand. Steve Rogers slips from your grip as the ship shudders, falling for the water below. You see in your mind's eye a scrawny man in an alleyway behind a movie theater clutching the lid to an old tin trash can, fire bright in his eyes and a scowl heavy across his brow.

You dive into the waters after Steve Rogers. You wrap your metallic fingers around the strap over his shoulder and you drag him to the shore where he will be found. You stand over him as he lays unconscious on the ground and for the first time you let your target live. There is only one thing that stands out in your mind, one thing stronger than the name he calls you, stronger even than the image of the scrawny man with the same sandy blond hair as his cornered in a brick alleyway, and that is the way his blood stains his uniform, red spreading over the blood, from the bullets you put in him. You turn and leave, staggering past trees and bushes, clutching your side.

It is time to find out who James Buchanan Barnes was.


End file.
